1:57 AM,
Jun. 5, 2013

Written by

Tom Vanden Brook
USA Today

The military's top uniformed officers acknowledged before a Senate panel Tuesday that they had lost focus on sexual assaults in their services while they also opposed proposals that would remove commanders' discretion to overturn decisions to prosecute troops and throw out their convictions.

A decade of war, said Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had pushed aside the issue in favor of improving "command climate."

Some members of the Senate Armed Services Committee supported the service chiefs' opposition to legislation that would strip commanders of their ...